Let us download the last working version on old systems.
OR
Publish a list of the products you're working on and keep it up to date to give us time to archive the game before you break it.
OR
Give us a minimum of 60 days to download, as promised in the user agreement.
Yes, you've stopped making available for me product I bought.

System requirements are the first thing I check before buying a game.
When you change the system requirements, it makes the game a different product. A product that I will not buy and never wanted to buy.

You've broke your main promise "Buy the game and it will be available in your library for later use". No, it is not. The product I bought worked on a different system than it does now. The new product does not work on my preferred system.

I'm not a geek with a gaming room and petabytes of space on hard drives.
I'm not able to archive my entire library. I'm an ordinary user.

It's probably been more than 2 decades now that I avoided a steam account. But I am starting to think that there really is no other way.

There is literally no influx of even haft-decently modern games on GOG and it feels like the split is only widening. I played Resident Evil 4 when I was young, and this platform still can't manage to sell it? Most games on steam don't even use DRM and are easily pirated. How can you not convince companies to sell games here? Are you even trying?

The only light I have seen recently are the Trails and the Eiyuden games. Nice that you sell RE1 - 3 (even if it's a shitty version I have to patch into a good state). And I don't even wanna rain on all your "old games, preserve" mission. I am with you. But not at the cost of not selling freaking half-decent half-recent games and not some crappy bargain-bin indi-nonsense.

> After 12 weeks, new sales are so negligible that "developers could eventually remove unpopular DRM schemes with minimal losses (and possible gains from strongly DRM-averse consumers)," Volckmann suggests: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2024/10/the-true-cost-of-game-piracy-20-percent-of-revenue-according-to-a-new-study/

How can you not get companies to sell here? If you tell me it's because they don't want to recompile their game for your platform, I tell you give them a compatibility or conversion tool. Or tell them: Fck achievements!

Go get me decent games so I can give you money!

Steam is not just big, they own most the game market and tell companies you sell to us only... at the same time Gog is trying to cut costs on what is already a shoestring

Even worthwhile indie games it feels like a harsh buzz. We've missed out on some major, major titles, and sometimes it feels suggesting to GOG's curators is akin to asking a blind, deaf, & mute person for directions to the only office furniture store in the county.

We've missed on Balatro, UFO 50, Subnautica, Satisfactory, Oxygen Not Included, UbiArt's Grow Home & Up, and that's just to name a few idly off the top of my head!

Edit/Addendum: The cost of piracy is less than the cost of management, and I'd bet on it.

You are not gonna get market share by down-sizing your efforts. And I don't think steam can tell double and triple A game companies where to sell. Nor are they gonna care to do so for 10 year old games. This is what I am failing to understand.

A game has razor-thin margins? Fine. What are your costs to sell it (including running costs etc)? Add 10 cents, and do so. Maybe it wouldn't get you money, but it will get you customers and market-share. Which in turn will get you money. Build up an actual catalog of games.

What preservation efforts? Spec Ops: The Line is gone.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around "Supported by Nightdive Studios". Churning out low-effort remakes then removing the original from the store (as they originally did with Blade Runner until a huge sh*tstorm forced them to put it back) and actually preserving the originals (thanks go to the ScummVM team who've been doing the actual preservation work that others are now cynically taking credit for for cheap marketing purposes) are two completely different things...

Peoples should buy games where they are the most complete or pay less when content is missing. If it's just patches, I care very little about version number if game works and can be completed.
More proofs that gog, like some other places, only does bare minimums.

Somehow i have to agree on many cases.

I got me the two Ground Control for a bargain... well... now i know why:

Boooom!

Now have to figure out what was happening....

A virus is probably not the culprit, rather a incompatibility.

The two Open Source RTS i got are definitely running better, nonetheless, perhaps the solution is easy.

What i can say for sure: Preservation is critical because with increased age more and even more games will slowly become incompatible and not always is a easy solution or a workaround available. It is way less of a issue if we got the source code openly available, because it will allow for a realistic way of fixing it; at least for those with sufficient knowledge.

The in general "overly protective" approach from the game industry can at some point bit the game in the darkest place.

At least you getting some infos there. Many error messages are vaguely generic these days.

Failure messages are in general not much use because i think the new age devs kinda are even either protecting their debug log or are even incompetent at doing it... ultimately making it even more complicated fixing a game... because visible source codes are still very rare on any game. If the dev is losing interest... a game can become doomed.

Sure, there are games with the source code totally lost... for example Shadow Madness a game i enjoy. Without emulation this game would probably be unplayable by now and reverse engineering is a lot of work; not even allowed by "todays rules":

Preservation is important without doubt, but only very recently this issue is slowly becoming more of a matter to anyone involved or affected.

At least you got some error codes and numbers. Some just say generic infos or nothing at all!

And apparently Ground Control 2 got a Serial Key... i was not able to find one.

Maybe a serial killer got it? Ahhhhhh!